Democrats — stop playing the Trump card!
Biden and Congress need to deal with real issues faced by ordinary Americans
We see this everywhere on Medium, Facebook, and just about every social media platform: scores of tired, pedestrian, humdrum criticism of Trump and his supporters. And I’m speaking as someone who has dreaded the election of Trump since 1988 when he first made noises about running for president. “Trump will turn our nation into a fascist state,” these writers scream. “Look at those toothless, beer-bellied MAGAt goons shopping at Walmart,” they laugh.
At the same time, many of these writers and commenters – who also tend to be some of the most vocal Vote Blue No Matter Who types (VBNMW) — rarely weigh in on the problems raging in our country. Perhaps economic problems don’t affect them directly because they’re in the top decile of earners. However, from an ordinary person’s point of view, the continued high costs of heating, power, and food remain a serious issue. Ditto home ownership which has been pushed out of the majority of people earning less than 100K a year. Or the skyrocketing costs of raising a child. And that’s only skimming the surface.
So if these Trump critics and the rest of the VBNMW brigade are as intelligent and informed as they pretend, why are they refusing to acknowledge our government’s poor handling of the economy, particularly inflation? Especially with an expanding military budget that ignores the impending crisis in Social Security? The true rot goes beyond Donald Trump. Instead, it lies in our political system, with Democrats and Republicans equally culpable and equally complicit.
Fear and loathing of the trickle-down GOPee
But first, a little personal background is in order here — just in case any of you assume I’m Republican.
From the age of nine, I was already taught by my parents that Republicans were a conservative and backwards lot. I certainly couldn’t help but notice how the few kids who befriended me — the only Asian girl in my New Jersey school — all had parents who supported McGovern. So when Nixon resigned after the Watergate scandal, we felt vindicated. Ha, our parents were right after all: Republicans were not only backwards but corrupt!
A few years later, becoming another rare Asian-American yet again in the surrounding towns of Chicago during the 1970s, I came to loathe Republicans even more. I saw all too well how few of our neighbors wanted to have anything to do with our family which had just moved into THEIR nice, leafy, middle- to upper-middle-class neighborhood block. Oh no, their real estate values would plunge with a gasp — colored family in their midst, heavens to Betsy! (Never mind that my recently tenured father had a Ph.D. in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Princeton.) I suppose we were fortunate no one burned a cross in our front yard.
I also noticed how a number of them had Republican signs in their front yards too. Putting two and two together, I decided that Republicans were a bad, racist lot — which was further confirmed as Reagan began to appear on the national radar, with his talk of “welfare queens” and affirmative action. Mind you, this was 1976, four years before he was elected president and forty years before Trump was. Nor did my views shift in 1989 when his second term concluded. His policies were very much the embodiment of Madonna’s “material girl” and Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is good” mentality.
Disillusionment with Obama’s “Hope and Change”
It was not until 2010 that my disappointment with the Democratic party surged — with a vengeance. Newtonian law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For me, this was certainly the case with Barack Obama whom I lauded to the skies in 2007–8.
Slowly but surely, the scales fell from my eyes as I noticed how he managed to break most of his promises — or at least, the ones I cherished. He said he was going to have Roe codified immediately, but didn’t. He said he was going to investigate and possibly even prosecute the likes of George Bush and Cheney, but didn’t. “We must look forward, not backward,” he explained nonchalantly.
He also promised to investigate and prosecute the bankers who caused the financial crisis of 2008 — which he didn’t. In fact, the only bankers who were charged were less than a handful of brown men who also happened to be foreigners. As for Jamie Dimon himself, he was “one of the smartest bankers” around!
Public option for health care? Nope. Even though Harry Reid, then Speaker of the House, said Obama could have pushed it if he wanted to. Repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the rich? Nope. It was left to Bernie Sanders to launch a very thinly attended 8-hour filibuster. Indeed, it is said that Obama was so embarrassed by Bernie that he decided to hold a press conference with his buddy, Bill Clinton–you know, the man who deregulated the market in 1999 that eventually triggered the banking crisis of 2008.
The truth was, there was very little hope and change. It’s as if he’d changed his slogan from “Yes we can” to “No we can’t.”
And so, in 2012, I voted for Jill Stein as a protest vote. Why should I vote for a man who was barely distinguishable from Mitt Romney (heck, Obamacare was largely Romneycare!) Did I owe him anything after he turned his back on the promises he made in 2008?
I thought of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who kept trying to raise more public funds, despite being denied repeatedly by Congress throughout his terms from 1933 to 1945. I thought of John F. Kennedy who kept fighting for increased funding of Social Security and Medicare (despite lowering taxes on the wealthy). And I thought of Lyndon B. Johnson who bullied and twisted arms in his own party to pass the Civil Rights Act: had it not been for his courage, men like Obama would probably not be able to vote — let alone become president.
Perhaps this disappointment in Obama’s inability — or incapacity — to carry out change or even struggle for it as did FDR or JFK led approximately 9-13% of those who voted twice for him to switch to Trump in 2016 with the latter’s faux economic populism.
Biden=Trump (minus the overt racism and homophobia)
Fast forward to today, November 2023. Given Biden’s poor handling of inflation and roiling markets, I have lost a good amount of my beneficiary account and have reason to fear destitution. Yes, I fared worse under Biden than Trump — something I did not anticipate even if I was not enthusiastic about the former senator from Delaware!
Although I suppose I’m still more fortunate than those who died or suffered in the train crash at Palestine, Ohio — an entirely preventable catastrophe: had the Biden administration chosen to reinstate the regulations ditched by Trump, there’s a good chance tragedy could have been avoided. (As I write, a similar derailment in Kentucky with poisonous fumes has just been reported.)
Ditto the banking disaster of March 2023 that began with the crash of Silicon Valley Bank — another preventable disaster. Again, if the regulations ditched by Trump had been reinstated, this tragedy could have been averted as well.
With Biden refusing to reinstate any of these regulations overturned by Trump — especially when the experts demanded the reinstatement of both sets of regulations, doesn’t that make him another de facto Trump? Especially now that he’s continuing the building of Trump’s wall?
Fed up with the Fed — and foul Powell, or the vindication of Richard Nixon
Then there’s the equally disastrous handling of inflation. Let’s begin by bearing in mind that here again, Biden can be said to have reinstated Trump policy by retaining Trump’s very own Fed Chief, Jerome Powell — and leaving it all up to him to combat inflation by raising interest rates rapidly and steadily. This meant that the average credit card rate rose to 22% just last month from 16% in March 2022.
At the same time, high interest rates caused the rent-to-income ratio to reach 40% with many Americans spending 40% of their take-home pay on housing because they are priced out of home ownership. (Not that Biden would have noticed anything out of the ordinary: it’s worth reminding readers that throughout his career as the senator from Delaware, he played a sizable role in deregulating banks and making it more difficult for individuals to escape their credit card debts and student loans.)
As for students who took out new loans after July 1, 2023, they now pay an interest of 5.50% as opposed to 4.99% last year and less than 3% in 2020. Moreover, in the blue state of California, 53% of college students face housing insecurity while 66% are food insecure: up dramatically from 36% and 39% in 2018–9. Is it any wonder that young voters have been disillusioned by Biden and the Democrats?
Lest you think this is just the uninformed railing of a history and literature professor, think again. Top economists Richard Wolff and Hal Singer have both observed that Biden could have prevented inflation from raging the way it did in 2022 and 2023. Wolff has repeatedly stated that Biden could have imposed FDR rationing or taken a page out of Nixon’s playbook from August 1971: threaten to prosecute any CEO raising prices.
(How ironic that more than fifty years later, I am actually praising the president I once reviled!) In the meantime, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which shapes supply chain decisions concerning clean-energy technologies of the future, has virtually zero effect on today’s inflation.
But no, Biden didn’t care in 2022 or 2023 — not so long as he promised his billionaire donors that “nothing would fundamentally change.” And not so long when his wife Jill is able to afford $15,000 earrings, $800 Jimmy Choos, and Oscar de la Renta gowns costing more than several thousands.
Much like Wolff, Hal Singer claims that “Biden could have used bully pulpit to shame and cajole firms that were exploiting the pandemic to impose massive price hikes.” But perhaps Biden was getting poor advice from his White House economists, some of whom went so far as to dismiss all ideas of profit-taking: including none other than the Wall Street friendly Larry Summers, who urged Clinton to deregulate the banks.
But Biden is not the only culprit. Congress has not been doing an appreciably better job either. Perhaps their minds were on other things, like attending Met galas (Alexandria Ocasio Cortez) and opening restaurants (Lauren Boebert). Or just bleating about inflation and doing nothing to resolve it like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
They too could have called executives to account for price gouging especially since post-1950 corporate profit margins reached their highest levels in 2022 — with sharp increases in the price of basic staples like eggs and cereal. Congress could also have imposed German-style price controls in mature industries to curb gas and heating bills.
That’s why yours truly was suddenly paying $160 for monthly electric bills and $550 gas bills last year rather than the customary $95 and $370 – even with the thermostat turned down to 61F degrees — or 63F on a brutal night. All while dealing with a rapidly depleting beneficiary account and having to search for extra gigs!
Could this be why American confidence in the presidency (23%) and Congress (7%) has plunged to historical lows as recently as 2022? This is while the U.S. sends $115 billion to Ukraine.
Time for a new party!
Let’s face it — both parties are more or less defunct. The present Dem party is as useless as the trickle-down GOPee is harmful. The GOP at least has managed to make gains for their party: for instance, by working to overturn Roe while the Dems since Carter have refused to codify Roe even when they had the opportunity. Why?
As such, those with a triple-digit IQ should be well aware that just crying out “Orange man — BAD” and “Orange supporters — BAD” is not going to solve any issues when a majority of Americans, including Dems themselves, are not only experiencing a turning back of the clock with recent Supreme Court decisions but also feeling the blight of a shrinking bank account. It is perhaps the latter that drives voters more than anything else. If you don’t believe the saying that “Americans vote with their pocketbooks,” just think of all the millionaires and billionaires who dreaded a Bernie Sanders presidency — including Democrats themselves. And recall that it is no coincidence that many of those who participated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection had suffered some form of financial distress — not that it palliates any of their crimes.
The very fact of the insurrection reveals all too well that those facing such problems can very easily succumb to fascist leadership — especially when those leaders promise to resolve their issues: none less than the likes of Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz have noted this. No wonder even Black and Hispanic voters, who have been mostly in the Democratic camp, are also drifting away from Biden and towards Trump.
What is necessary for all self-respecting Democrats is to reject all choices sanctioned by the Democratic establishment, meaning the Democratic National Committee (DNC). We need to stop reelecting the likes of Nancy Pelosi and those who’ve capitulated to her. This is a woman who supported an anti-choice, pro-NRA Henry Cuellar over a pro-choice, anti-NRA Jessica Cisneros in Texas — and one who denies that inflation is a problem. (Of course — she lives lavishly in an 8000 sq ft house!) Or Chuck Schumer who fast-tracked fifteen of Trump’s judicial picks in 2018. (Compare with Mitch McConnell who stalled Obama’s picks.)
In short, many of our leading Dems have betrayed us. So why are some Democrats so bent on defending the likes of Pelosi or Schumer? Or are they just as foolish as Trump’s MAGAts, believing wholeheartedly in the wisdom of their party leaders?
If it takes a third party to expunge Democratic corruption, so be it. It took the American Whigs several years before they morphed into the Republican party (a radically left party of the time!) in 1856— thereby eventually enabling the abolition of slavery.
Maybe instead of wasting time writing asinine articles that boast, “See how clever and educated I am compared to a MAGAt” or trying to convince voters to reelect a clearly senile Biden, Dems would do well to follow in the footsteps of the American Whigs and start a new party. Screw Vote Blue No Matter Who! Because it’s time for those of us who are truly democratic to flip our finger at the current dregs of the party and to declare ourselves independent: freed from the greed of Dem donors and the prostitution of their political lackeys.
Recommended readings: for comprehensive but accessible accounts of the failure of the Democratic party since President Carter, see:
Thomas Frank, Listen Liberal, or whatever happened to the Party of the People? New York: Metropolitan Books, 2016.
Lily Geismer, Left Behind: How the Democrats Failed to Solve Inequality. New York: PublicAffairs Books, 2022.
© Frances A. Chiu, November 22, 2023. All Rights Reserved.
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